Deeplinks Blog posts about Innovation

Blue Spike LLC is a patent litigation factory. At one point, it filed over 45 cases in two weeks. It has sued a who’s who of technology companies, ranging from giants to startups, Adobe to Zeitera. Blue Spike claims not to be a troll, but any legitimate business it has pales in comparison to its patent litigation.

Update 9/26/14: Recently Apple has announced that it is providing basic encryption on mobile devices that they cannot bypass, even in response to a request from law enforcement. Google has promised to take similar steps in the near future. Predictably, law enforcement has responded with howls of alarm.

Every few years, the White House updates its Strategy for American Innovation and asks for comments from the public. EFF’s submission explains that overly restrictive intellectual property regimes can stifle innovation by limiting the ability of researchers to build upon existing knowledge. Our comments address three topics on that theme.

We’ve written before about how copyright is chipping away at your right to own devices you’ve bought and paid for—from e-books to toasters and even your car. Time and again, people who want to modify their own property or sell it to others are told that they can’t, because their property comes saddled with copyrighted code they’re not allowed to modify or give away when they are done with the device.

Right now the FCC is considering a set of rules that would allow Internet providers to offer faster access to some websites that can afford to pay. We need to stop them.

Let’s start with the obvious: The Internet is how we communicate and how we work, learn new things, and find out where to go and how to get there. It keeps us connected to those we love and informed of political events that affect our everyday lives.